When I last blogged on the Mac going Intel, someone made a comment that made me stop and think: essentially, that if one could run Windows apps on a Mac, that there would be no reason to make a native Mac port. Just write for Windows, and you’d get everybody; the Mac people could just switch to Windows to run your app.

There wasn’t much I could say to that, really. I could argue that the Mac OS is more stylish, intuitive, etc., and while that might be a draw for users to go to the Mac, to a software company looking at the bottom line, these would probably not be nearly important enough to spend time and money for a Mac build. A better argument would be that the Mac OS is usually 2-3 years ahead of Windows in adding features, so developers that want to be more at the cutting edge would have an incentive to port to the Mac–not to mention security and other advantages. Whatever way, it seems inevitable that the Mac will allow a simultaneous Windows boot–but I couldn’t imagine that Steve Jobs would overlook a hole as big as the one my commenter mentioned (one that is now being discussed at length in many Mac forums).

This is where Dharma comes in, formerly called “Yellow Box.” It’s a development environment which allows programmers to develop Windows and Mac OS X versions of software with much greater ease. It’s just a rumor at present, but it would make sense. It would be an equally if not more appealing alternative to simply making everything Windows-only. It would be more universal (not everyone with a Mac would also run Windows), and would be less expensive than a full second version of the software for another OS. Other enticements would be a better programming environment; I will not pretend to understand, but I’m reading many programmers saying that they’d love to program using Apple’s Cocoa environment. If true, and if using Yellow Box for that purpose would allow programmers to produce a Mac port with much greater ease, you’d probably see far more Mac-compatible software than you do now, and more reason for users to make the switch.

As evidence that it’s more than just a rumor, this image has started showing up–one of Apple’s Safari browser running on Windows. Unless it’s a well-made hoax, this matches up with reports that Yellow Box could allow for good multi-OS ports being produced with relative ease.

It is still far from the time we can know if such a strategy would be effective, or if it is even true. Maybe Jobs has something else in mind entirely–but one thing for sure, he’s got to be aware of this eventual possibility, and must have a strategy for dealing with it.